Debra Darvick
enhance your now in word and imageJ-E-W
BEFORE NOW
Parting of the Seas
Chanting, or leyning, the Torah dates back over two thousand years when it was read on market days — Mondays and Thursdays. These twice-weekly readings ensured that everyone, not just scholars, would become familiar with the Torah’s laws and narratives. The Torah reader depended on a partner who offered hand signals that delineated for the former the various cadences of the chant. Then, as now, the Torah was also chanted on Shabbat morning and afternoon. Eventually, the hand signals of the marketplace were transcribed into trope symbols. What labanotation is to ballet, trope symbols are to Torah chanting.
Although my heart pounds every time, I love chanting Torah. Once I have the verses down, they become a mantra of sorts. They live in my head. They live in my memory. Chanting Torah is a curious mash-up of quasi-memory and word-by-word recitation. Because there are no vowels in the Torah, one begins with a voweled facsimile. Once my voice remembers the vowels and my eyes can imagine them, I shift over to a voweless text identical to a column of Torah.
A recent portion, B’Shallach, recounted the parting of the Sea of Reeds as the Children of Israel fled Egypt. Of the weekly readings I’ve learned, B’Shellach (in the sending away) is my favorite. In places, the cadences mirror the action described in the text. When the Sea of Reeds parts, we read that the water became walls to the right and to the left. The tropes mirror this movement reaching a crescendo before descending once again. The recounting of the drowning of Pharaoh’s horsemen and their horses is chanted in a minor key. The switch from major to minor keys serves as lamentation for the deaths of our enemies.
When I chant Torah I become part of this ancient tradition. Though no woman would have been allowed the role back then, I am part of the line nevertheless. Each time I am called up to chant, I tremble before and heave a sigh of relief afterward. Between the trembling and the sighing, Torah’s holy words carry me though on dry land.
Sacred Chutzpah
This essay is from writer Matt Field’s Substack “That Jew.” I am drawn to this particular column for many reasons. Most of all because he reminds me of who I am, from whom I am descended and who I want to be.
Subscribe at https://thatjew.substack.com/
The Doctrine of Sacred Chutzpah
A Charter for Jewish Conscience, Courage, and Continuity
Matt Field, December 28. 2025
That Jew is more than a name. It is a way of standing upright in a world that bends easily. It is a posture of conscience, a refusal to shrink, a promise to ancestors who carried our story through fire.
This doctrine is not written for approval but for endurance. It is a statement of who we are, why we remain, and how we will live. It is a reminder that Jewish identity is not inherited quietly. It is chosen again each day with clarity, courage, and love.
We have never been a quiet people.
Ours is a faith that began with a question and has survived by never ceasing to ask it. We do not wait for permission to speak, to build, to wrestle, to believe. From Sinai to exile to return, our story has been written by those who refused to accept the world as it was handed to them. This is what we mean by sacred chutzpah: the courage to be Jewish not as reaction, but as revelation. The audacity to live as if holiness still matters.
Sacred chutzpah is not arrogance. It is the discipline of conscience, an unshakable belief that dignity and truth are not granted by power or numbers, but carried within the Jewish soul. It is the moral defiance of a people who have buried prophets and kings, who have seen empires rise and rot, and yet still light candles on Friday night. It is humility before Heaven and defiance before tyranny. It is the refusal to surrender wonder.
The first to show it was Abraham, standing before God and asking, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?” That moment has never ended. Moses argued with the Infinite and spoke to Pharaoh with nothing but a staff. Jacob wrestled an angel and walked away limping, yet blessed. Esther broke silence and saved her people. The prophets cried out against kings in God’s own name. The sages argued with Heaven until Heaven conceded that moral reason had its place. The Jew’s audacity has always been the holiest thing about him.
In every generation, the fire took new form. In Spain, Jews whispered prayers behind locked doors. In Yemen and Morocco, they taught children to sing in languages the rulers could not read. In Vilna and Warsaw, they printed forbidden books by candlelight. Each act of memory was a rebellion disguised as ritual. In captivity in Gaza, some Jewish hostages described marking Shabbat with whatever fragments of time, breath, or faith they could gather. Through exile and persecution, that same spirit became our armor. In the founding of a state, it became visible again, Jews who had known power only as oppression reclaiming the right to breathe freely.
In Israel, sacred chutzpah is the hum of a people who plant trees on battlefields and hospitals on fault lines, who argue in the Knesset and then stand shoulder to shoulder when the sirens sound. It is the rhythm of a nation that still believes the world can be repaired.
That Jew carries all of this inside him. He does not ask for the world’s permission to exist, nor does he confuse acceptance with belonging. He studies, argues, weeps, laughs, fights, and still says Shema Yisrael when the night is long. He understands that memory is not a wound to nurse, but a covenant to honor.
That Jew is not one person but a generation rising to remember. That Jew stands in synagogues and city squares, in classrooms and boardrooms, in kitchens and protests. That Jew lives in the tension between faith and freedom and refuses to surrender either. That Jew is the continuation of a story that refuses to die.
That Jew is not fueled by hatred of enemies, but by love of life.
That Jew knows that morality without courage is theater, and faith without struggle is sleep.
That Jew does not mistake victimhood for virtue, nor power for corruption.
That Jew builds, questions, protects, and insists that holiness belongs in the public square as much as in prayer.
Sacred chutzpah is the moral technology of Jewish survival. It has kept us from surrendering to despair or to perfection. It teaches that holiness is not passivity but partnership. We do not wait for redemption; we build it brick by brick. We do not accept injustice, even from God. We do not bow to kings who demand silence. We do not erase ourselves to be understood. To be a Jew is to stand upright in a world that keeps asking you to kneel.
Today, sacred chutzpah asks something harder. It asks us to be unafraid of our own light. To wear our symbols not as apologies but as affirmations. To argue with intelligence, to love with intention, to live without flinching from the mirror of history. The world does not need quieter Jews; it needs Jews who remember why their ancestors refused to vanish.
Our chutzpah must be creative, disciplined, unembarrassed. It must make moral courage fashionable again.
That Jew walks through rain, sleet, heat, and snow for our hostages and our dead, carrying names, photos, and prayers through streets that would rather move on.
What Sacred Chutzpah Demands
Sacred chutzpah demands clarity when others prefer confusion.
It demands speech when silence is safer.
It demands the courage to love our people more than we fear our enemies.
It demands integrity that is not for sale and identity that is not negotiated.
It demands that Jewish pride never become Jewish complacency.
Sacred chutzpah does not wait for consensus. It moves from conscience.
We do not owe the world our silence, our disguise, or our despair. We owe it our best selves. We owe it honesty and example. When we stand proudly Jewish, we declare that faith and reason can coexist, that memory can be a teacher rather than a chain, that courage can be sacred.
Sacred chutzpah is not comfort. It is responsibility. To carry it is to know that our survival demands meaning, not only endurance.
We are the people who wrestle and bless. We question because we believe.
We argue because we care. We survive because we refuse to forget who we are.
Sacred chutzpah is not what we use to face the world. It is what we use to face ourselves. It is the conscience that keeps us awake, the stubborn hope that persists without proof. It is our inheritance and our obligation.
We are That Jew.
The one who remembers.
The one who builds.
The one who refuses to disappear.
And we will not whisper our story. We will tell it out loud. Because the world needs That Jew awake. And because God, if still listening, deserves to hear the sound of a people still unbroken.
This is not the end of a thought. It is the beginning of a mission. The world will try again to make us smaller. Sacred chutzpah will answer again: Hineni. Here we are. Still Jewish. Still unbroken. Still ready to build.
That Jew is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
image definition The New York Times
Instead of Doom Scrolling
To varying degrees we cannot tear ourselves away from the broadcasts. Someone said this week, “I will watch it all.” For this person, bearing witness is solidarity. Others tell me they can only watch so much. They turn away, only to reach for the remote again a half hour later.
A friend who is also a rabbi and one of my teachers cautioned us against steeping ourselves in the horror. She shared a link to a daily seminar that is broadcast by the JPPI. From their site: The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) is an independent professional policy planning think tank incorporated as a private non-profit company in Israel. The mission of the Institute is to ensure the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization by engaging in professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world.
JPPI’s daily seminars are led by Institue fellows, former Israeli ambassadors, professors, IDF generals and more. Again, from their website: A rotating team of experienced analysts of Israeli military affairs, the US-Israel relationship, Israel’s political system and the country’s diverse society, will guide you through the fog of war, the bombardment of news – real and fake – the barrage of tweets and posts and the confusion of chaos. If you care about Israel and the Jewish people, if you want to get the signal amid the noise, JPPI’s Daily Inside Analysis is for you.
These daily conversations (most are about an hour of less and begin at 10:00 a.m. EST) are a welcome counterpoint to the news broadcasts. You can watch prior broadcasts on YouTube here. I can’t figure out how to share the embedded link in their daily note but if you email me I can send it to you or contact laura@kamgs.com.
JPPI is correct, if you care about Israel and the Jewish people, if you want to get the signal amid the noise, JPPI’s Daily Inside Analysis is for you. And for anyone else whom you think would welcome it. Please share this post.
Looking Back Upon an Unforgettable Day
Tomorrow is the Jack Benny anniversary of our son’s bris. How clearly each moment remains: the dread of anticipation, the joy at having family celebrating with us, exhaustion and uncertainty about this whole endeavor called motherhood. I was responsible for this new life. Eeegad! It was beyond me to imagine how that little being would grow into the amazing man, father, son, husband, grandson and friend he continues to become. Instead of writing any more, I shall leave you with the my recollection of that day. It is the opening story in my book, This Jewish Life, Stories of Discovery, Connection and Joy.
And on the Eighth Day You Shall …
“And who’s going to be there to celebrate if we have a boy?” I was eight months pregnant and about to be transferred from New York to the wilds of the Midwest. I had just realized that if our first child was a boy, we would have only the barest handful of family at his bris. Our immediate family would make the spur-of-the-moment trip no matter when the eighth day fell, but my aunts, uncles and cousins wouldn’t travel from Manhattan to Michigan for a bris—nor would my husband’s 30 or so relatives who had watched my pregnancy with loving and not-too-overbearing interest. All of our friends would be left behind. How many caring friendships could be cultivated in 21 days—the time between our arrival in Michigan and my due date? I began hoping for a girl, even though I’d been getting “boy” vibes ever since the little blue circle had appeared in the glass tube seven months before.
But when the plane touched down in Detroit, a bris was the last thing on my mind. We had three weeks to settle in, unpack, scope out the grocery and drug stores, interview pediatricians and learn the shortest route to the hospital.
As it turned out, I did have one acquaintance: a woman I’d known briefly from B’nai B’rith Girls during my high school years in Atlanta, who now lived 10 minutes away. Our first weekend in Michigan, she and her husband threw us a party to introduce us to their circle of friends. Her friends were in various stages of diaperhood and warmly invited me to join their playgroups when I felt ready. There were few Jews in our neighborhood, but in a procedure reminiscent of the old Farmer in the Dell game, one introduced us to another until we had met them all. The couple from whom we’d bought our house kept in touch, even offering to take me to the hospital if my husband couldn’t make it home from work in time.
One morning I called a baby nurse recommended to me by our future pediatrician. “Lord, you called way too late,” she said when I asked if she could come 12 days hence. “But I will give you this: If you have a boy, don’t let anyone near him but Cantor Greenbaum. I’ve taken care of plenty of boys in my time, and Cantor Greenbaum does it better than anyone else.” Her well-meaning advice only reminded me that we knew barely enough people to make a minyan. I called the cantor and then, feeling lonelier than ever, hoped against hope I wouldn’t need his services.
I went into labor on my due date. Eight days later, Cantor Greenbaum showed up at the appointed hour. My friend’s friends and the neighbors we had met during the past few weeks arrived with cookies and cakes, bunting blankets and knitted sweaters. My grandfather was in classic form: Every few minutes, I heard the punch line to a Yiddish joke, followed by ripples of laughter. My stepmother had set up a wonderful brunch for us all to enjoy. Maybe living in Michigan wouldn’t be so bad, after all.
And then, all of a sudden, it was time. My grandfather held his great-grandson in our new maple rocker while the mohel chanted blessings over my son. Well into his 70s and feeling frail, my grandfather had been reluctant to participate so directly in the ceremony. I had insisted, as there was no greater honor I could give him than to make him sandak, the overseer, as our son was entered into God’s covenant with Abraham. I knew his strength wouldn’t falter.
I looked around the tiny room that was our son’s nursery and was overcome at the tableau before me: People who barely knew us had skipped work to be with us, to welcome our child into the Jewish community with fanfare and affection. The woman who’d sold us our house held my hand as the mohel made his dreaded cut. When my son wailed, my knees buckled. “Did you ever think you could love something so much?” she whispered to me, squeezing my hand. She had seen straight into my heart. Then, with shouts of “mazel tov!” drowning out our son’s cries, it was over. God’s pledge of loyalty to Abraham’s offspring now included our son.
Thinking back on that day, I am reminded of the passage in Exodus when the Children of Israel proclaim to God, “We will do and we will listen.” In the desert, they promised action and had faith that understanding would follow. In my own Michigan desert, the day of my son’s bris taught me the power of Jewish ceremony. It taught me the value of following ritual for no other reason than “just because.” It taught me that our tradition cherishes community, and that by embracing the former, we are richly rewarded with the latter.
© Debra B. Darvick
A Glorious Shabbat Spent in Community
I hadn’t attended a Shabbaton (also called a kallah) since I was in high school. A Shabbaton is a weekend-long celebration designed around the Jewish Sabbath, beginning Friday evening at sunset and concluding 25 hours later on Saturday evening. A Shabbaton is an opportunity to steep in Jewish learning, prayer, and song, have great discussions with a wide variety of people, all with eating lots of wonderful food while socializing.
When I learned that Hadar was having its first Shabbaton since the pandemic, I wanted to go. I’d spent the first two-and-a-half years of the pandemic Zooming with a wonderful group of women as our teacher led us through Jewish study and prayer, daily meditations and as we grew to know one another, quite deep sharing. Some of these women were also going; we were eager to meet one another face-to-face for the first time.
The organized pandemonium at the hotel Friday afternoon was much as I remembeered it from high school. This time, however, I was not lugging a sleeping bag and a pillow. Frazzled yet cheerful staff directed us to the check-in, distributed totes filled with info, a syllabus, and a cool set of reusable silverware and handed us our room keys. When I reached my room, there was a text from a friend back home.
“Are you in Connecticut?”
“Yes. Are you here at the kallah?”
“No, but D. [her daughter] is. She thought she saw you.”
And that is the essence of Jewish community — it’s not six degrees of separation but one. Sometimes two. D. and her wife were there with their three daughters. I hadn’t seen them since their wedding years before. I trusted eventually we’d bump into each other even though I learned there were nearly 600 people attending. Shelving that number along with any anxiety over getting Covid, I put on my mask and headed down to services and then dinner.
One of Hadar’s founding principles is a commitment to what I like to call diversity united. This, in part, from Hadar’s About page: Hadar welcomes people from all walks of Jewish life – teens to great-grandparents, of all denominational backgrounds, from around the country (and around the world). We have programs for college students, for music-lovers who seek to build spiritual community through singing, and for lay people who simply enjoy Torah study.
It was amazing to see the range of ages throughout the weekend. Young parents attended with their children and their parents. The youngest attendee might have been three months and the oldest a tad north of 90. What better way to model learning and joy in Jewish life than to bring together many generations for a weekend. At the final event, a fabulous concert by Joey Weisenberg, I saw a curve of teens standing with their arms around one another’s shoulders as they swayed to the music. Pretty standard I thought remembering myself at their age. Then I realized that some of the kids had come with their parents who were sitting (and dancing) nearby grooving to the music. What? Going to a Shabbaton with your parents is……cool? Wow.
It was thrilling to engage in deep study at every level of complexity. Some classes studied the texts in Hebrew; the majority were in English. Hevruta (partnered) study assumes the two (or three or four) learners are on equal footing. A nine-year-old’s insights into a text are just as welcome and valid as those of someone four or eight times her age. Seeing new perspectives on familiar texts is as exhilarating as studying a text for the first time.
At services on Saturday morning men and women had equal roles in leading the davening (prayer) and chanting from the Torah scroll. Toward the end of the service a group of youngsters came up to lead a prayer that is sung responsively. The words are complex and the pace is quick. They led us with energy and skill. The youngest was probably four. She didn’t know the words but joined in just the same with her sibling who was holding her.
I felt a deep sense of continuity. The next generation is already taking their place in the chain of Jewish life. A dark thought or two intruded. What a target 600 praying Jews would be to some hateful broken person with an automatic rifle. I gazed at an infant sleeping in her father’s arms and thought of the infants shot and bayoneted by Hitler’s alcolytes. We can’t make those who hate us stop hating. In my opinion that’s not my responsibility. My responsibility is to be a Jew in the fullest way possible and to share that joy when the spirit moves me. My responsibility is to be kind, to be aware of the times I judge reflexively, to help those in need and contribute to my community.
Somewhere along the way I did see my friend’s daughter and her family. She speaks only Hebrew to their daughters. Her spouse speaks to them only in English. All their girls are learning Spanish in daycare. Like any young parents they are juggling eleventy million balls in the air and somehow manage through the craziness. After lunch on Saturday one of my Zoom buddies and I took a long walk. We’d only met once, a year before. It was still novel to see one another in three dimensions. We got to talking as girlfriends do, weaving a relationship one shared story at a time. We are thrilled by the miracle and novelty of having become friends during a worldwide calamity of isolation and pandemic.
When I received a survey some days after the Shabbaton I gave rave reviews and probably a suggestion or two. What I couldn’t yet realize was what would stay with me since then. It might have been fifty years between my last Shabbaton as a teen and the one last November. The girl that I was came along to this one, too. We still have much in common. We love Jewish learning. We love that we are Jews. We still get a kick out of random one degrees of separation. It was cool to reach back and bring her along and know she was delighted that I did.
Victimhood
I thank Chazzan Steve Klaper, one of the founders of Song and Spirit, for the wonderful commentary below. His inspiration drew upon the last verses in Deuteronomy (Dvarim in Hebrew) that were read in synagogue over Simchat Torah a week or so ago. It speaks to me deeply. Especially the next to the last paragraph. What kernel stays with you?
In Ha’azinu Moses prepares to take leave of this world. He wants his final words never to be forgotten, so he sings them…The theme of Moses’ libretto is essentially, Don’t blame God when things go wrong.God is not there to serve us. We are here to serve God. God is not there to relieve us of responsibility. God calls us to responsibility.
This whole drama began with the Adam and Eve legend in the Garden of Eden. They sinned, the man blamed the woman, the woman blamed the serpent, the serpent blamed God for making him a serpent. The great cry of human history is, “it’s not our fault — we’re the victims.” It wasn’t us. It’s the politicians. Or the media. Or the corporations. Or our genes. Or our parents. Or the system. Even the Nazis were convinced it wasn’t them. They were “only obeying orders.” And when all else fails, blame God. And if you don’t believe in God, blame the people who do. We forever seek to escape from responsibility.
Moses is saying, When things go wrong, don’t blame God. The final commandment might as well be: thou shalt not see thyself as a victim. We have power, we have agency, we’re the one life form on this planet capable of shaping its own destiny, in the image of the Divine, free, creative, and therefore responsible. The Greeks had it wrong; we’re not playthings of the gods; our fate is not already sealed before we’re born. The view of modern science, which often insists that we’re merely a collection of chemicals driven by electrical impulses in the brain, is likewise wrong. Our consciousness, our personality, our chi, our life force energy — these are all far larger than what’s in our skulls.
It is not what God does for us that transforms us; it is what we do for God. If you’re not sold on the idea of God the Creator, think of it this way: We are not defined by what happens to us but rather by how we respond to what happens to us. If we change the way we think, then we change the way we feel and the way we act. We become masters of our actions, instead of prisoners of our reactions.
This doesn’t just happen. Yes, it takes work, sometimes years of work. But, as we reach the end of Torah, we’re reminded that fate is never final. There is always hope.
photo courtesy of Debra Darvick